Child overweight and obesity is a worldwide public health problem which has serious implications for children's health throughout their lives as well as causing significant healthcare and indirect productivity costs. 1 Children consume around onethird of their food energy at school. This means that school meal provision is a potential policy lever to reduce prevalence of obesity among children, 2 and at the same time to help households with the cost of living. In previous work 3 we found that

more »

... oviding free lunches to Reception children through the Universal Infant Free School Meal policy significantly reduces bodyweights over the course of children's first year in school and saves a typical family of four approximately £20 in total on food expenditure per month. In this work we study the longer-run impacts of providing free meals to primary school children by looking at Universal Free School Meal (UFSM) schemes implemented in primary schools, in four local authorities (LAs): Newham (from 2010), Islington (from 2011), Southwark (from 2012) and Tower Hamlets (from 2014). Comparing changes in outcomes in these LAs with those that do not run UFSM schemes enables us to evaluate causal effects on bodyweight outcomes at ages 5 and 11, and on household food expenditure.